Archive for May, 2012

Nurse says I’ll respond better to IVF than TMD, but it is only in terms of quantity, not quality. Though obviously my eggs are great, or were three years ago, considering I had twins and the woman I shared my eggs with also had a baby.

Cancer risk apparently under 5% and doesn’t increase with multiple cycles. Still scary. But they know of no clients of theirs who have developed it.

I miss our rambling outdoor lifestyle, the fact that the only thing that existed beyond our garden was forest, hills, fields, and stream. I miss the huge old trees in our back garden, the way we had to walk down that little path on the little hill to get into the huuuuuge wild park. It was surrounded by trees with dirt paths weaving in and out – you could get to different places in the neighborhood by following them.

And our neighborhood. Oh, the jillions of kids around Snort and Coconut’s age that lived right on our street, especially my five good friends (with their assorted children) who all lived within ten minutes of toddler-speed walking. Most of them babywore, breastfed, one of them was considering home education.

Our local centre where we went for storytime (Snort and Coconut refuse to go to our new local storytime) and playgroup, where the staff watched my two turn from babies to little children. The old guy a street over who we were friendly with. All the amazing families all within reach; we knew them all.

And the bit of stream I’ve been thinking about so much in this hot weather. It meandered alongside two big lakes, and was the perfect depth to splash and wade and explore. And our ‘secret lake’, filled with the paths and trees and butterflies I thought would be the backdrop to our future years home educating.

I miss it all, I wonder if we haven’t made a mistake, but there is no turning back now. Someone else calls our house ‘home.’

I’m here in this new house, with children who cry and plead every single day to go home. Snort just keeps saying ‘please please pleeeeeeease’ and sobbing. Last night I actually had a nightmare about it. And my own deep sadness revolving around the world we left, oh, it makes it so much more difficult when my children are so very, very sad. What can I do but cuddle them, reflect their feelings, talk with them about being sad and missing one house, but still being happy at another?

I say to them, ‘I know, honey, I sometimes wish we could go back to that house, too’ but I leave out the rest of what I want to say: that I was happy there, much happier than I am here, that here I am suffering from the claustrophobia of people and concrete and too many buildings. I am not someone that can survive, let alone thrive, in a world without secret wooded spaces, streams, and friends. I suppose the friends will come (and hopefully Lauren and Ivy become regular playdates for us!), and the green spaces….well, there are lots within driving distance.

But I miss the times of laughing, tripping lightly outside in my bare feet, running down to the park. The daily walks we did, sometimes twice, in the woods, the green shadows playing over our faces.

I wanted to pepper this entry with pictures of our old home, our first family home, but just looking at them made my eyes fill with tears.

This morning I had an interesting thought. It was: Hey, I’m just dressed the way I’d normally dress. No need to change anything or even have a moment’s worry.

Why is this interesting? Well, today we are hoping to meet another blogger who lives in my area. I’ve known her quite some time, and she takes beautiful pictures of her little girl and everything else. She’s coming over to our house this afternoon – and when I told Coconut a little girl named Ivy and her Mama Lauren might come over this afternoon, she replied, ‘Ivy is my best friend!’ What a great way to approach meeting new people.

I think she gets it from me.

I don’t know where this confidence comes from. Ten years ago, hell, maybe even five, I would have been thinking about what sort of impression I wanted to make. What to wear, specifically, which is totally fucked up because I don’t care about things like that in the least.

But this morning I didn’t think about any of that till I was already dressed. Is this the mythical confidence that kicks in during your thirties? Is this the confidence attached to feeling like a great parent? Maybe both.

I could write a veerrrryyy long post about my views – past, present, and future – and attitudes towards social situations and meeting new people. The short story is I was a child with no friends but a very active imaginative life, and now I’m an adult who has shining social skills. I think camp helped me make the transition. I think coming out did, too – I had to OWN who I was, be proud of it, and take major risks in order to live my life.

So here I am today.

When we open the door, Lauren will have to climb over all the fucking toys that will no doubt be coating the floor* by the time she arrives. My children will probably be mostly naked. We still have moving boxes in the dining room. And you know? It’s okay.

I mean, you readers of this blog, you know my trials and tribulations (and love!) of reuseable menstrual cups, my epic battles with pooping during pregnancy, my deep and fragile emotional upheaval around my father. Compared to those things, what the fuck difference does it make what I’m wearing?! Ha.

*Or more likely, on the couch. The kids had a game before we moved where they shoved all the toys into barracades. Just giant piles that divided the room. Snort upped the game by carefully fitting pieces together – so effectively that I would be trapped in the kitchen and unable to break apart these masterpieces. This evolved into playing ‘rubbish truck’ once we moved. They literally pile anything and everything onto chairs, couches, whatever.

We’re talking toy pianos, books, mini chairs, every toy, shoes, etc. NOW this has changed once more into ‘car ride.’ They pack up the car to go for a ride on our big, red couch. They fill every fucking available space, and stack it up with about three feet of random shit. Every single day. So you know, no one can actually make use of the couch for the use it was intended. Though it more often than not is covered in these shit heaps (aka ‘The very special and important things we need for our car ride’) and I want to encourage them to build and create. It causes no harm.

It’s cute. So I may have forgotten what the couch was originally for, but judging by the faces of those who enter our house, I should probably hang up a warning sign or something.

So, we bought a car. I pick it up tomorrow, and we get some new car seats this weekend.

Car seat tangent: Our kids are still rear facing at almost 3 years old, with no complaints from anyone! They fit really well, and they are happy being backwards even though they now get to ride facing forwards in their Nana’s car (her car is too small for rear facing). We are BIG proponents of rear facing, though unfortunately I think our new car is too big to allow them to safely rear face. I guess we’ll have to see, but I think it is too spacious and wouldn’t work – and our seats, though convertible, are sort of wiggly when facing forward. So we are probably going to buy forward facing (boo hiss boo!) seats for the new car and keep the rear facing in TMD’s car. Let’s hope my inability to drive a giant fucking bus won’t result in an accident, seeing as they will be forward facing in all likelihood.

In other news, I’m fucking obsessed with diaper bags. Like, truly having a problem stopping watching endless youtube videos about them. Reading amazon reviews. Joining facebook b/s/t groups. I’ve always been a bag girl, but changing bags take it to The Next Level. All those pockets! So organized! So many options!

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I need to delete ebay and amazon apps from my phone. Yesterday.

I feel marginally better when I go into my little facebook addition groups, because these other women have like four different patterns in ONE bag – and they own about five different bags. I’m not lying when I say stash pictures sometimes have like 30 different bags or accessories. I’m not that bad.

But not being ‘that bad’ doesn’t make me ‘good.’ I need to stop spending. Do any of you guys do this? Especially stay at home mums? I’d much rather use the money on outings with the kids, or to put into savings. (I guess you can fill in any amount of money – the amount I spend is really rather small compared to most people, but really rather too much based on our budget.)

Tomorrow morning we’re dropping the kids off at their Nana’s and going car shopping. Our flat sale completed a couple of weeks ago, which means (thankfully!) we are no longer paying for our mortgage or million other bills that come along with having a property….bills that weren’t that big of an issue until TMD took a massive paycut and we moved across the country.

So, cars. Wish us luck. We are fucking chickens who can’t negotiate and feel wary of buying from private sellers. So I’ve found a potentially great car from a garage….it has everything we want except it’s at 90,000 miles. That’s a bit higher than we wanted, but hey. It also comes with a free two year warranty.

Wish us luck.

I’m feeling a little crazy today, so while I desperately hope we find The Car, at the same time it’ll be nice to just have some alone time with TMD. I wonder how long we can reasonably leave them with her mum. Ha.

So you all know TMD had her second AMH bloods done. I had mine drawn two days ago at my local doctor’s. The nurse didn’t use the kit provided, because for some reason she only does bloods with the needles/blood collection things that specific doctor’s office uses. She checked the vial had the same ‘additives’ as the one the clinic provided, so fingers crossed she has not fucked up a very expensive test.

I don’t know, y’all. My mother was all ‘Cancer!! IVF is The Cancer!!’ and I can’t actually find any conclusive medical research to support this. IVF CAN speed up the progression of certain forms of breast cancer if it already exists, but it also LOWERS the risk of other cancers. Is this a wash? My mom was like, ‘What is the use of having more kids and then dying on them?’

So despite inconclusive medical research, erring on the side of it’s all probably fine, my mother’s C-word tactics have scared me from ever having more hormones enter TMD or myself. And my crotch is ….new. Pain in the symphasis pubis, but a totally different sort than I’ve had before. I really must google what effect the IVF hormones might have on my SPD, especially as I suspect I am one of the very, very few who have longterm SPD partly due to hormonal issues.

In other news, life is sort of great. It’s been so sunny and I’ve been so I-am-the-most-relaxed-person-on-earth. I took fifty minutes to blow up our huge new inflatable swimming pool, and the kids are just naked and swimming in dirty grass water and throwing stones into buckets filled with soap water. They are piling the couch high with anything not nailed down (a game previously referred to by them as ‘rubbish truck’, now called ‘going on a car ride’). We are eating leftovers in the garden, having ‘picnics’ on the kitchen floor, surviving on an eating when hungry basis.

The only thing I am uptight about is the constant application of suncream. Alas, if only I had been so rigid with myself, I would not currently have a left arm on fire.

But in direct contrast to the IVF TTC debacle (and the realisation that it’s 1000 more than I told you, due to the added cost of swimmers, etc) and the near daily diarrhea it has given me, life is feeling pretty golden. We are barefoot bike riding, bug hunting, scrubbing weird machinery in the garage with old toothbrushes for fun just taking it one hour at a time.

So there we were, walking along the street, and the words popped out of my mouth. ‘Once upon a time….’

I wove words into a simple tale, and got the most gratifying response. ‘More.’

Another story. ‘And more.’

Another. ‘That’s a lovely story, Mama.’ Beaming faces. Intent listening. The urging for my words to keep going, to weave around us in a spell of golden light, to find out what happens next.

And it occured to me – while I have read endless stories to my children, made up millions of songs, I’d never before just said those simple words. Those once-upon-a-time wonders that opened the doors to stories about, well, anything I fancied. My reluntance to tell stories had perhaps hindered me to think about the possibility of creating them for that most brutal, yet loving, of audiences….my very honest children.

So with the words of ‘More, Mama! More stories!’ in my ears, with the memory of my daughter instantly grabbing hold and starting her own ‘once upon a times’ to herself, I sat down to write again.

Pen against paper this time. No straying from what has always been my home, writing for older children and younger adults. My two completed novels, and my half finished novel, are still here in this house. But now there is a new cheapie notebook, lined with my increasingly messy handwriting, filling up with stories the way I told them when I was eight years old. A little at a time, in my own writing, carried around and always ready to record more of what I have to say.

TMD made the kids a Dinosaur Island! We planned to get Coconut this wooden one for her birthday. After we made this decision, she then looked in our favourite catalogue and – aren’t we good present pickers – asked for that exact item.

And asked.

And…

So TMD made this over a couple of nights for them to share. It is a huuuuuge hit. We are now talking about building extensions – ah, caves, rivers, forests. The possibilities are endless.